Language Center

Tilburg University is an internationally oriented research and education institute. The Language Center assists students, university staff, and non-university students in improving their language proficiency.

Portuguese for Visitors

Portuguese takes
seventh in the list of top 10 most influential languages in the word. That is
not strange, considering Portuguese has more than 210 million native speakers. In
addition to Portugal, Portuguese is also the official language of emerging
economies such as Brazil, Angola and Mozambique. Knowledge of this language
won’t look bad on your CV or resume at all.

The Language
Center offers the course ‘Portuguese for Beginners’.

Portuguese for Beginners

13x 3-hour classes, 8 hours self-study per week, 6 ECTS

This course
teaches you the basics of Portuguese with an emphasis on reading, listening and
writing. One assignment you will have is to write a text about a normal day in
your life. You will also visit a cultural event where Portuguese is spoken and
afterwards you will share your experiences with the rest of the group. Each
class deals with a different topic. An interesting detail: you will also learn
a few contemporary Portuguese songs that are related to the topic.

The two
varieties of Portuguese will be explained: European Portuguese, which is spoken
in Portugal, and Brazilian Portuguese. What are the differences in sentence
structure, pronunciation and vocabulary? The instructor’s mother language is
Brazilian Portuguese, so you will learn a great deal of this variation of the
language.

At the end of
the course, you will be able to introduce yourself, ask for information, write
short texts and understand a simple conversation. You will have reached the A1
level of the Common
European Reference Framework.